


Helping Hands

by Jcapasso916



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-09
Updated: 2016-01-10
Packaged: 2018-05-12 17:12:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 19,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5674090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jcapasso916/pseuds/Jcapasso916
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After escaping from purgatory with the Leviathans, Gabriel finds himself human, alone, and vulnerable, so he turns to the only people he can for help, but they aren't very happy about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Gabriel was huddled in the cold damp cave, hoping his hiding spot would be good for a little while longer while he recovered from his recent injuries, when suddenly he was snatched out and found himself surrounded by blackness and unable to move. He was warm though, and not in pain anymore, so he couldn’t be bothered to care very much. He wasn’t sure how long he rested there, but he was thankful for the break from running and fighting and hiding, even if it was more than a little unsettling to be stuck with no light or sound or movement. It was this relief that had him clinging on for dear life when he felt himself being thrown back. He used all of his considerable strength and then some to keep himself anchored in this nice reasonably comfortable only by comparison place. 

He must have blacked out from the effort because the next thing he knew, he was washed up on a riverbank cold and soaking wet so he picked himself up, picked a direction and started walking. No point in running until something was actually chasing him. Better to save his strength after all. He felt different than usual, but wasn’t in the right frame of mind to place it so just kept moving on. It was about two hours before he saw a house and stopped in shock. There were no houses in purgatory. Did he really make it out? Was he back in the real world? He pinched himself to make sure he wasn’t dreaming and, after making sure no one was home, snuck inside and grabbed some food and a change of clothes since his were dirty and in tatters. 

He was able to find a pair of jeans that were just slightly too big for him and an even bigger t-shirt. It was a cold night so after noticing that the guy had six different coats, he grabbed one and then got out of there before the guy came home leaving his wet, ripped, and dirty clothing behind. He would never know, but when the homeowner returned and found them he decided to just let the theft go, realizing that whoever stole the clothes, food, and coat needed them more than he did and when he ran across a small limping man two days later in town wearing a coat he recognized he just looked the other way and didn’t comment on it. 

Gabriel’s first move after leaving the house that he had broken into was to head into town to find out both where and when he was. He realized he’d been dead for more than two years, though it had seemed like much longer to him. He knew that he was completely lost and vulnerable, and probably had quite a few enemies out there who would love to run across him in a weakened state, not to mention that even though his powers were gone, there may still be some creatures out there who could tell what he was and want to take him out just for that. He knew he needed help, and there was only one place he could go. He figured dying for them earned him a little help and a place to lie low while he figured out his next move. 

The problem was finding them. He had never had use for a phone before so he didn’t have their numbers, and even if they weren’t warded against being found, he was human now anyway and he highly doubted an internet search for Sam and Dean Winchester would be very helpful. He was left with no other choice than to just find a hunt and wait for them or another hunter who knew them to show up. It was that flawed thinking that led to his current predicament as, just before dawn, he was leaned up against a dirty dumpster with a vamp about to sink his teeth into his neck. 

He was too weak to fight so he did the only thing he could think to do. He tried to bluff his way out of it, telling the vamp that he was friends with the Winchester’s and that it would regret hurting him when they came around. This, unfortunately for him, just made the vampire angrier and more determined to take away something the Winchester’s cared about. He was about half a second from becoming vampire chow when the vampire’s head slid off his shoulders and there was an older scruffy looking man standing behind the vampire. 

“Should know better than to mention the Winchester’s to a vamp kid,” the guy reached out to help him up from where he had crumpled to the ground when the vampire lost his grip. 

Gabriel shrugged, trying to hide how badly he was shaking. “He was gonna eat me anyway. Figured it was worth a shot.” Gabriel was definitely not used to feeling gratitude towards anyone or anything so he could perhaps be forgiven with how difficult it was to get out the words, “Thank you,” and how strained it sounded. 

Hunters were luckily not very social people and understood the struggle with such things so the guy just shrugged and asked, “You really know the Winchesters?”

“Yeah. We kinda got…separated…a few years ago and I’m trying to find them. You couldn’t help me out could you?” he asked hopefully. 

“C’mon kid. You look like you’ve had a time of it. Let’s grab some grub and I’ll give em a call,” the guy said walking away. 

Gabriel, knowing that being human now meant that he needed something more substantial than sugar, forced himself to order a normal meal while the man took out his phone to call Dean. 

 

Dean and Sam were hunkered down in Rufus’ old cabin, Bobby coming in and out every once in a while, but hey, he wasn’t the one being hunted. When Dean’s phone rang he answered it shortly. “What?”

“Hey Dean. Got a kid here says he knows ya and been lookin for ya.”

Dean furrowed his brow in worry for a moment. As far as he knew everyone who knew them could just call him. “Who is it Joe?” he asked suspiciously.

Another voice suddenly came on the line, “What’s up shorties? Guess who came back to life!”

“Gabriel!” they both yelled, Dean in annoyance, Sam in shock. “Why the hell are you looking for us?” Dean asked incredulously. 

“Well here’s the thing kiddos. I’m kind of…well…completely human at the moment and could use a place to lie low while I figure out where to go from here,” Gabriel said cheerfully. 

“And you’re looking for us why?” Sam asked just as incredulously. 

“Well I figured dying for you muttonheads should get me a little leeway, dontcha think?”

“After killing us how many times?” Dean said dubiously. 

“Hey, water under the bridge and all that,” Gabriel popped off.

“Yeah I don’t think so Gabriel. Find someone else to put up with your crap,” Dean said testily. 

“Wait wait wait,” Gabriel said before Dean could hang up. Dean didn’t say anything, but refrained from hanging up just yet. “Look. You guys know me. And you know how hard it is for me to ask for help, but I’m asking okay? I’m begging if that will help. Please.” He really hadn’t wanted to go there, but he realized that he had no other choice. If they wouldn’t help him then he was screwed. 

“Dean…” Sam said tiredly. He knew that Gabriel was really desperate if he was going this far. 

“Okay fine. But I swear to god Gabriel, if you start annoying us or playing tricks of any kind, you’ll be out on your ass before you know what hit you, got it?” he said firmly. 

“Yeah. Got it,” Gabriel said tightly. 

“Now put Joe back on the phone.” Once he heard the phone switch hands Dean said, “Where are you guys? We’ll come pick him up.”

“I’m actually on my way out of town. Headed west from Boulder,” Joe told him.

“We’re north of you. Why don’t you just dump him at a park nearby or something and we’ll be there to pick him up by this afternoon?” Dean said. 

“Alright. I’ll drop him at Foothills community park up the street,” Joe said. Now that he realized that this guy wasn’t human, or hadn’t been before, he wanted nothing more than to get some distance. 

“Thanks Joe. And tell him that we aren’t gonna go looking for him so he better not wander off anywhere. If he’s not in plain sight when we get there, then we’re leaving him.”

“Will do,” Joe said as he turned and motioned for Gabriel to hurry up and finish eating. 

Gabriel just sighed and asked the waitress to bring him a box for the rest of his food. He didn’t want to risk having to find his own way to the park in a city he knew nothing about and possibly even be too late and miss his one chance at salvation. 

The old hunter sped away almost before Gabriel was out of the truck and grabbed the nearest bench to the parking lot to finish his breakfast. 

 

It was mid-afternoon before he saw the familiar Impala pulling into the parking lot and he sighed in relief. It had started storming a few hours earlier and there was no shelter in plain view so he was soaked to the bone and freezing. April in Colorado wasn’t exactly warm on a good day.

Sam gasped at the sight of Gabriel. He looked so small and pitiful standing in the pouring rain, soaking wet, with his coat pulled tightly around him hunched over for warmth. When he saw the former archangel heading for the car he jumped out and opened the door for him, figuring his hands may have been too cold to properly work the handles. He wanted to do more to take care of him, but didn’t want Dean to go apeshit over the delay. 

“And you’re cleaning up the car when we get back too after dripping all over it,” Dean said tersely.

“Tomorrow,” Sam said firmly glaring at Dean. 

“Fine,” Dean said and Gabriel just nodded in the backseat as he hugged his knees to his chest.


	2. Chapter 2

They had been on the road about an hour before they found a deserted highway surrounded by forests and Sam told Dean to pull over. Dean did so looking at Sam curiously and he turned to Gabriel in the backseat, who still hadn’t said a word, and said, “C’mon.”

Gabriel nervously got out of the backseat, hoping that they weren’t just planning to leave him here. If it had been Dean he would have been certain that they were, but Sam wasn’t that cruel so he followed the younger hunter who opened the trunk and rummaged in it for a while before holding out something to Gabriel. “Go change out of your wet clothes. Those will be way too big on you, but they’re dry. Sorry I can’t do anything about the shoes.”

Gabriel opened his mouth to make a sarcastic comment about Sam trying to get him out of his clothes, but he bit it back just in time, took the clothes and headed for the tree line to change. “That better not have been my clothes,” Dean said out the window as Sam stood next to the car. 

“No Dean. They were mine,” Sam said tersely leveling one of his patented bitch faces at his brother. 

“Good. Bad enough you made us stop for this crap,” Dean said annoyed.

“Do you want to have to take care of him if he gets sick?” Sam asked acerbically. 

“Oh hell no. You’re the one who went all doe-eyed wanting to help the jerk. You get to handle him.”

“Then shut up and let me handle him,” Sam said heatedly as he noticed Gabriel heading back, carrying his wet clothes as far from him as he could. Sam grabbed a plastic bag from the trunk and met him halfway putting the wet clothes into the bag. 

Once they were back in the car, Gabriel once again hugged his knees to his chest, just not quite as tightly. He may be dry now, but the chill was still there. Sam decided to try to make conversation. “So where did you get those clothes? They looked a little big on you too.”

“When I got back I found a house where no one was home so I went in and took them,” Gabriel said softly. 

“You stole them?” Dean said heatedly. “Why am I not surprised?”

“Well what else was I supposed to do? My other clothes were in pieces and it’s not like I had any money to go buy anything, even if I could walk into a store like that,” Gabriel said defensively and Sam glared at his brother again to remind him to let him handle it. 

Dean threw up his hands in surrender so Sam turned back to Gabriel and asked, “Back from where? Do you remember?” 

“Purgatory,” he said in a small voice and Dean cursed and nearly drove the car off the road. They both had a pretty good idea of how he got back and it wasn’t something either of them wanted to think about, but it was especially nasty for Dean. Sam gave up on conversation after that, seeing the pulsing vein in Dean’s neck like he was about to blow and didn’t even object when Dean turned the music up loudly. 

 

Once they got back to the cabin Dean immediately jumped out of the car and stormed into the house, leaving Sam to help a stiff Gabriel out. “You gotta learn not to sit so still for so long. That’s what makes you so stiff,” Sam said with a chuckle as Gabriel groaned and wobbled a little before finding his footing. Sam noticed he was limping and asked, “You ok?”

“I’m fine Sam,” he said shortly before catching himself and adding a quiet, “Thank you.”

Sam just let his tone pass. He could imagine that this wasn’t easy for him. Sam led him in the house and to one of the bedrooms. “You can stay in here. It was Rufus’ room when he was alive. His clothes are still here and will probably fit a little better than ours, though they will still be a little big, of course.” 

Gabriel nodded and headed for the bed as Sam left him alone to go start dinner, it being late evening already. Once it was ready, Sam dished it out onto three plates and started to pick up the third and take it to Gabriel, thinking he wasn’t really in the mood for socializing. Dean stopped him though. “I got it,” he said harshly. Dean walked into Gabriel’s room and dropped the plate onto the night stand. “Don’t go expecting us to wait on you while you’re here either. This is a one-time thing,” he growled and walked out. Dean wanted to make sure to get that straight before Sam ended up being taken advantage of. 

Gabriel didn’t come out of his room that night except to sneak quietly to the bathroom. The next morning though Sam and Dean woke to the smell of food and headed into the kitchen just in time to see Gabriel disappear out the door with a rag and bucket, presumably to clean up the Impala. Sam glanced over and saw the third plate in the microwave and narrowed his eyes in confusion. Was Gabriel not hungry yet? If not, then why did he make breakfast? He was soon distracted by his food though and put the matter out of his head. 

After breakfast, Sam and Dean put their plates in the sink and went to watch TV, planning to wash the dishes later. They didn’t notice when Gabriel came in and took his plate to his room, or when he came back out and washed the dishes. As a former trickster, Gabriel was very good at being unnoticed when he wanted to be, even using normal human means. 

They were roused again around lunchtime by the smell of food again, just before Dean was going to get up and make something and he turned just in time to see Gabriel escape into his room with his plate. He narrowed his eyes suspiciously, wondering what Gabriel was up to, but decided to worry about it later as he went and grabbed the other plates for him and Sam. 

It went on like this for days, Gabriel sneaking around and doing all the cooking and cleaning when they weren’t paying attention or were out or sleeping and not leaving his room otherwise and Sam was getting fed up with it. He waited until Dean was busy and knocked lightly on Gabriel’s door. He opened it when he heard a quiet “Come in.”

“Gabriel, what’s going on with you?” Sam asked part suspicious, part concerned. 

“What do you mean?” Gabriel asked.

“You never leave the room unless you’re cooking or cleaning up after us and you rush away if we happen to see you. It’s not like you,” Sam said crossing the line into fully concerned. 

“Yeah well, Deano made it perfectly clear that being like me was going to get me a one-way ticket to nowhere and I don’t much like the idea of being alone and vulnerable out there with father only knows who or what hunting me, so I’m staying out of the way,” he said bitterly. 

Sam sighed heavily. “You can come out you know. Just don’t be annoying or play any pranks.”

“I can’t be something I’m not Sam. But I can’t be me either. Not here. Not now. So I choose to be nothing at all and hope I can manage to survive this nightmare in one piece.”

Sam gave him an apologetic look and reached out to put his hand on Gabriel’s arm. Gabriel jerked back like he’d been burned. “Sorry,” he said sheepishly putting his arm back. “It’s just all so new and everything.”

“What do you mean?” Sam asked curiously. 

Gabriel looked at him searchingly for a moment trying to figure out if he really wanted to know or if asking was just an instinct before he sighed and began. “Well before I was just inhabiting this body. It wasn’t really mine you know? So I didn’t feel things like that as clearly. It’s strange. In most ways I’m so much more limited, but in some…in the ways regarding the body itself, it’s so much more.”

“How so?” 

“Before, when someone touched me, I could feel every molecule in their hand. I could feel every pore, every wrinkle, every line, but there was never the warmth or the…I don’t know…emotion I guess…in it like there is now. It was more…clinical,” Gabriel struggled to explain. 

Sam nodded as though he understood. “You said you were more limited in most ways. I’m guessing you don’t mean just your powers?”

“No. I can’t see or hear right. Normally I could look at you and see not just what you look like, but your soul, but everything is so dull now. It almost hurts. And I could usually hear everything, even your heartbeat and the blood rushing through your veins, but now…nothing. It’s almost like being surrounded by moving corpses. It’s very unsettling.”

“I can imagine,” Sam said sympathetically. “But you know you’ll never get used to it unless you come out of here sometimes right?” Sam was tempted to tell Gabriel to stop doing everything for them too, but knowing that was the only time the former archangel left the room he was hesitant to do so. Gabriel just shook his head looking nervously towards the door. “Look. Gabriel. I won’t let Dean kick you out unless you get really out of line okay?”

“It’s okay Sam. Really. I don’t need to cause any more trouble between you two.”

“Ok how about this? I’ll find Dean a hunt and send him off with Bobby and you can spend some time outside the room with me then,” Sam said firmly. 

Gabriel studied him curiously for a few minutes before nodding tersely. Sam smiled and started to reach out to pat him on the leg, but pulled his hand back. No need to get him skittish again. Gabriel saw that though and knew that he needed to get over it so he put a hand on Sam’s arm and said, as sincerely as he could manage, “Thank you Sam.” Sam patted his hand twice and walked out.


	3. Chapter 3

It took two days for Sam to find a hunt to send Dean on, but when he left to meet up with Bobby Sam sighed in relief and headed for Gabriel’s room. He hadn’t made breakfast that morning or cleaned up the dinner dishes like he usually did either before making breakfast or after Sam and Dean went to bed, but it’s not like Sam minded or Dean noticed. Gabriel wasn’t their slave, even if he had seemingly taken on the role anyway. When he knocked on Gabriel’s door and didn’t get a response though he got worried and ignored the rudeness of it and just went in anyway. 

He could tell as soon as he saw Gabriel that there was something really wrong. It wasn’t anywhere near warm enough for him to be sweating so profusely, and he really should have stirred when Sam came in. He wasn’t exactly quiet about it. The hunter rushed over to the bed and put a hand on Gabriel’s forehead snatching it back from the heat radiating off the former archangel. That seemed to have woken Gabriel up though at least. “Sam?” Gabriel slurred. “What’s going on?” he asked barely legible. 

“You’re sick Gabriel. How are you feeling? What hurts?” If he could figure out what kind of sick it was maybe he could find a way to help.

“Everything,” Gabriel groaned. 

“You’re gonna have to be more specific, Gabe. Does your throat hurt? Do you have a headache? A stomachache?” Sam started throwing questions at him. 

“Stomach. Yeah. And chest. And legs. Itchy too,” he managed to say. 

Oh crap. Please don’t let him have caught chicken pox or measles or something. He gently pulled Gabriel’s shirt up slightly so he could see if there were any spots on his stomach and gasped at what he found before pulling the shirt up more to see what looked like runes carved into his skin and they were infected. Badly. He couldn’t imagine how much that must have been hurting him for days. “Damnit Gabriel. Why didn’t you say anything?” he muttered before saying more audibly for Gabriel’s benefit, “Ok Gabriel we have to get you out of this shirt so I can clean your wounds. This is gonna hurt.”

“Don’t matter. Everything hurts anyway,” he slurred again. 

Gabriel was in no shape to help him though so Sam just propped him up and pulled the shirt off. He was glad to see that Gabriel’s back was clear so laid him back down and pulled out the rubbing alcohol, bathing the wounds in it. He knew he would have to get inside the wounds too though so he reluctantly grabbed his penknife and started re-opening them, doing his best to ignore the fevered whimpers from Gabriel as he did so, pouring the alcohol in them as well as Gabriel’s hands fisted in the sheets and tears fell from his eyes, but he stayed mostly still and allowed Sam to work. “I’m sorry Gabriel, but I’m gonna have to check your legs too, and some of these look like they go below your pants line so we’re gonna have to get you naked.”

“Just…wanna…get me…out of my…clothes,” Gabriel panted trying his best for a sarcastic tone but it didn’t exactly work very well. 

Sam just rolled his eyes, “Yeah sure Gabriel. My lifelong ambition. To feel up a sick and delirious archangel.”

“Knew…it,” Gabriel tried to say smugly. 

Sam just gave a little chuckle as he finished removing Gabriel’s pants. Oh shit. This was going to be a nightmare. Whatever Gabriel had done to himself went way too low on his pelvis. There was maybe half an inch if that of leeway before he would have cut the most sensitive part. As it was he didn’t know how the archangel had been able to manage it with how badly it must have hurt. It was obviously done after he lost his powers otherwise it would have healed immediately. And now he would have to do it again. He decided to get the legs first before coming back to that part. Once he was done with everything else he said, “I’m so sorry for this Gabriel, but you’re going to have to be very very still ok?”

Gabriel nodded and Sam bit his lip and started cutting. It wasn’t until he finished cleaning them that he noticed that Gabriel had been biting his lip too and it was bleeding now as well. Sam wasn’t too worried about that though. It would probably head pretty quickly without any interference, but Sam did give him some whiskey just in case, hoping that the alcohol in it would keep it from getting infected too. Sam also dug up some generic antibiotics that they kept on hand for emergencies and gave some to Gabriel with the whiskey and some ibuprofen before slathering some cream heavily on bandages and wrapping the bandages around most of his body. He would need to call Dean and have him pick up some more first aid supplies and Gabriel had a lot of explaining to do when he was in any shape to do so. Thankfully they had enough first aid supplies stocked to Gabriel taken care of through this, but it would clean them out. 

Sam kept checking on Gabriel throughout the day, giving him more medicine as needed and cleaning and re-bandaging his wounds every four hours, even getting up most of the night to do so. By the next morning Gabriel was much more clear-headed and Sam was able to just tell him what to do and let him do it himself. Once he was finished and covered Sam came back in. “Ok. What the hell Gabriel?”

“You’re gonna have to be more specific,” Gabriel said sheepishly. He wasn’t sure which of the many questions Sam probably had that he wanted answered first. 

“Ok let’s start with what is all that and why would you do that to yourself?” Sam asked heatedly. 

“They are runes, to help me hide. An angel in purgatory is like a beacon, even though we don’t have our powers there, we are still angels at the core. No angel lasts long there. I did that to help me stay hidden. It didn’t work perfectly but enough that I could get some rest every once in a while and even find an out of the way cave to hole up in for a few hours before I was found again.”

Sam blinked at that. He wasn’t sure what purgatory was like but it couldn’t be pleasant, and it sounded like it was even worse for an angel. “I didn’t recognize most of them,” Sam said. “I caught some of the Norse ones, but I didn’t see any Enochian either. I would have thought there would be some of those.”

“Enochian bindings throw up as much of a beacon as an angel does. Different magics carry different scents. That’s why there are so many different ones. It gets confused and jumbled and is harder to track. The Norse ones are just the only ones that are around in this age so they are the only ones you would recognize.”

“What happens when you die in purgatory?” Sam asked curiously. 

“You just go poof. You completely cease to exist,” Gabriel said with a shudder. 

Sam put his hand on Gabriel’s arm soothingly. “Why didn’t you say anything? Or take care of the wounds when you got here?”

“I figured they would heal. I’ve seen humans heal all the time from cuts. I didn’t know I needed to do anything special,” Gabriel said with a shrug. 

Sam suddenly realized that he would have to teach the archangel how to be human. Sure he was much farther along than Cas had been as far as culture and technology, but when it came to basic human needs he was at as much of a loss as any angel would be. “Do you know how to take a shower?”

Gabriel looked at him like he was stupid, “Do you know how long it took me just to figure out how to use a toilet?”

Sam didn’t think he really wanted to know and so refrained from asking. He waffled for a few minutes before deciding that a shower would definitely help, even if it wouldn’t feel too good with the still open wounds. Gabriel had thankfully put the baggy sweatpants and sweatshirt that Sam had given him back on after he wrapped himself back up so when Sam took him to the bathroom he didn’t get a show. 

Sam showed him how to adjust the water temperature and left it at lukewarm for now. Too hot and it would hurt even worse. Then he picked up the shampoo. “This goes in your hair. You take a few drops, put it in your hair and rub it in. You’ll probably need to do it a few times this time. Once it starts sudsing when you rub it in that means your hair is clean.” He stopped to make sure that Gabriel understood before moving on and picking up the soap and the washrag. “You wet the rag then wrap it around the soap like this and rub it between your hands until there are suds. Then you scrub your body with it. For now, just pat over the bleeding parts though. Then you use his towel to dry off and put on some clean clothes. Got it?”

Gabriel nodded so Sam left him to it. About ten minutes later Sam heard a thunk followed by a crash and ran to the door. “Gabriel? You okay?”

He breathed a sigh of relief when he heard a shaky, “I think so. I really don’t like this smelly brick thing though,” he added petulantly. 

It took Sam a moment to realize the ‘smelly brick’ was the soap and he must have dropped it and then slipped on it and he couldn’t help but laugh. “Just be careful with the smelly brick. It’s slippery,” he managed to get out. 

He heard a grumbled, “Now he tells me,” from the bathroom and just shook his head, still laughing and went back to the couch.


	4. Chapter 4

Gabriel was well enough to be up and around without pulling too painfully on his wounds by the time Dean got back. He had given Sam a hard time about the first aid supplies, wanting to know what happened and who was hurt and threatening retribution of Gabriel had hurt Sam, but Sam just told him that Gabriel was the one who was hurt and wouldn’t give any details. 

When Dean came in Gabriel tried to get off the couch to go back to his room, but Sam grabbed his arm stopping him. “No Gabriel. You are going to sit here and be social. Dean won’t be throwing you out unless you get way out of line,” he said pointedly looking at Dean. 

Dean had noticed Gabriel staying out of the way and decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but at Sam’s insinuation he couldn’t help but feel guilty. “You mean…” he trailed off. 

“Yes Dean,” Sam said firmly. “Gabriel has been staying in his room except for cooking and cleaning and avoiding us like the plague because he was afraid you were going to throw him out if he bothered us and he knew he couldn’t survive on his own yet.” Sam piled the guilt on his brother even higher and it was about to get worse. 

“Oh. Well…um…yeah. You can come out and talk to us,” Dean said uncomfortably and then looking down at the first aid supplies he was putting away asked in a voice that tried to sound concerned, “Sam said you were hurt?”

“I’m fine now. Thanks,” Gabriel said, not quite comfortable enough to be back to his old self just yet. 

“Yeah. Now. You could have died Gabriel,” Sam said more for Dean’s benefit than Gabriel’s. He could see Dean’s point, but that didn’t excuse him being such an ass to someone who was lost and alone and scared, and the fact that Gabriel got in such bad shape just made him even more protective of the archangel. 

“Yeah. Ok. But I really am still a little tired so I think I’m gonna go to bed,” Gabriel said nervously. He didn’t really want to be there if they were going to be fighting about him anyway. 

“You sure?” Sam looked at him as if trying to see through him. 

“Yeah. I’m sure. I’ll stick around for breakfast and stuff tomorrow. Promise,” Gabriel said making his escape to his room. 

“What happened to him?” Dean asked curiously. 

Sam snorted. “Well apparently purgatory is pretty much hell for angels. They are hunted for sport and Gabriel carved himself full of runes to help him stay enough under the radar to survive, but didn’t know enough about being human to know that he needed to take care of the cuts so they got infected,” Sam said shortly. 

“How bad?” Dean asked. 

“He was running a really high fever and was on the edge of delirium when I found him right after you left. I had to carve him back open to get rid of the infection.”

“And we would have noticed sooner if I hadn’t been such an ass. I get it Sammy,” Dean said impatiently before asking, “How much did he cut?”

“The entire front of his body,” Sam said evenly. 

“The entire…?” Dean asked going pale at the implication. 

Sam knew what he was thinking and just said, “Very, very, close.” Dean gulped audibly and privately gained more than a little respect for the archangel at that. Not only that he had managed it in the first place, but that he had put up with it for long enough for it to get infected and stayed on his feet until he literally couldn’t anymore. 

Dean made something quick for dinner, and once again offered to take it to Gabriel, but it was a very different conversation this time. “You should eat something before you go to sleep. It’ll help your body fight off any residual infection.”

“I…um…thanks,” Gabriel stammered out taking the plate from Dean. Dean nodded and left the room. 

 

Sam and Dean once again woke to the smell of breakfast, and this time found Gabriel seated at the table eating his own. “Thanks Gabriel,” Sam said with a bright smile. It was perfectly reasonable for Gabriel to do breakfast since he was obviously up earlier than the rest of them anyway, but he wasn’t going to let him keep doing everything. 

Gabriel smiled back at him. Once they were more awake, Gabriel asked something he’d been dying to know and hoped he wasn’t opening a can of worms. “So how did you guys manage to get Luci back in the box?”

Dean glared at Gabriel and asked, “Did you plan…”

Sam cut him off with a stern, “Dean!”

“No Sammy. It needs to be put out there one way or another,” he said to his brother before turning back to Gabriel. “Did you plan on Sam saying yes to Lucifer and jumping in the hole?”

Gabriel’s fork clattered to his plate as he lost his grip, “He did WHAT!?” When he saw the sheepish look on Sam’s face and the satisfied one on Dean’s he knew they weren’t jerking his chain and he turned back to Sam, “How stupid can you be? I mean I always knew you were a self-sacrificing idiot, but this just takes the cake!”

“Hey! It worked didn’t it?” Sam said defensively. 

“Yeah and you got to hang out in the cage with Michael and Lucifer for a year and a half and now you get to deal with fun little hallucinations as your mind is held together by duct tape and spit!” Dean said harshly. 

“Ok. I don’t even know where to start,” Gabriel said tiredly.

They told him the whole story right up until Sam pulled Lucifer and Michael into the pit before he interrupted. “Nice job getting them both, but you shouldn’t have been able to take control from Lucifer like that. How did you do it?” he asked completely baffled. 

“What do you mean?” Dean asked curiously. He figured it was just a matter of will-power but Gabriel made it seem like there was more to it than that. 

“When an angel takes a vessel we are completely that vessel. Your consciousness would have been completely at his mercy in every way. No amount of stubbornness could overcome that,” Gabriel said. 

“Well…” Sam started sheepishly. 

“Sam…” Dean said sternly. He was sick of Sam hiding shit from him.

“It’s not really that important,” Sam said evasively. 

“Let us be the judge of that,” Dean said firmly. 

“Ok so when my first attempt failed, I looked around until I saw a crack in his defenses and I just started pounding until it gave way.”

“What kind of crack?” Gabriel asked incredulously. 

“It was…well…you,” Sam said with a half-shrug. 

“Me?” Gabriel asked shocked. 

“He killed you and was feeling really guilty about it so I shoved all my memories of you at him, then I shoved all my memories of me and Dean at him, but imagined it as you and him, and pulled his memory of when he killed you and finished off with that and then I had control. So I guess, in the end, you beat him after all,” Sam explained with a smile at the former archangel. 

Gabriel pushed his mostly empty plate away and got up from the table and went back to his room without another word. Sam looked worriedly after him and started to get up, but Dean grabbed his arm. “Leave him for now. We’ll drag him out for lunch.”

“Was it something I said?” Sam asked confused. 

Dean snorted. “You basically just told him that his death was used as a weapon to destroy two of his brothers while also pointing out that Lucifer really cared about him and you want to know if it was something you said,” he said shaking his head as Sam paled. 

“I didn’t think of it like that,” he said softly. He had considered it in a manner of getting justice for Gabriel’s death, but now that Dean put it so bluntly he could see where he had screwed up and again looked back towards Gabriel’s room, but Dean shook his head. He had meant what he’d said outside the hotel that night. He really could see right through Gabriel and right now knew that he just needed some time alone. He knew he would in that situation. Now that he knew that Gabriel hadn’t planned what happened to Sam and that he could be one tough SOB when the situation called, he was starting to warm up to him a bit. 

Sam just cleaned up after breakfast and then made lunch. Sam was about to go get Gabriel when Dean yelled, “Gabriel! Lunch!”

Gabriel came out of his room and sat at the table as Sam said, “Gabriel, I’m sorry.”

Gabriel just waved a hand dismissively, “Just forget it Sam.” Then he turned to Dean, because he knew that Sam wouldn’t give him a real answer. “What was that you said about his mind and hallucinations?”

“Well he was in the cage for about a year and a half. Well his soul was anyway. Cas pulled his body right out, but when we got Death to get his soul out he put up a wall blocking the memories of hell, but then Cas broke the wall so now he’s pretty messed up,” Dean explained in what he thought was a concise manner, but left Gabriel more confused than ever.

“Wait so Cas pulled his body out, but left his soul, then broke the wall that Death put there, and I’m not even going to ask how you got Death to help, but why would Cassie do that?” he asked. 

“Well it’s like this,” Sam tried to take over, hoping he could be a little clearer than Dean. “With Michael and Lucifer in the cage, Raphael got it in his head to get them out and restart the apocalypse,” Gabriel put his head in his hands and groaned as Sam kept talking. “Cas tried to fight him, but he wasn’t strong enough so Crowley came up with the idea to get the souls from purgatory to give him a power boost, but we wouldn’t let him so he broke the wall to distract us from stopping him and he was gonna put it back when he was done, but then the leviathan got loose and Cas didn’t make it.”

“Ok I want to go back to purgatory now,” Gabriel said tiredly. Dean chuckled humorlessly. “So let me get this straight. First he leaves your soul behind, then works with a demon, then breaks the wall in your head, then releases the leviathan, which, trust me bucko’s is a very very bad thing, especially since I’m guessing he took out the last archangel before he exploded, and you’re defending him?”

“No. Not really,” Sam said looking down. 

“Not at all,” Dean said harshly. Then he got an idea and he looked hopefully at Gabriel. “Do you know of anything…or anyone maybe that could fix Sam?”

“I’m guessing Death declined to help again?” Gabriel figured that would have been their first try since he had put the wall in the first time. When he got confirming nods he thought for a moment. “Maybe,” he said with a cringe. “We’ll need to get some things together though, just in case.”

Dean slid Gabriel a piece of paper and a pen. “Make a list and we’ll take care of it.”

“Dean, if this is dangerous…” Sam started. 

“It’s a manageable danger,” Gabriel said not looking up from the paper. 

“See? Long as it’s manageable,” Dean said perkily. 

“Since when are you so trusting?” Sam asked annoyed. He didn’t want anyone in danger for him manageable or not. 

“Since there’s a chance, however slim, of fixing you,” Dean said resolutely.


	5. Chapter 5

Once they had everything they needed, which took about a week for Bobby to gather and get to them, since they couldn’t be seen in public with Leviathan’s impersonating them killing people, Gabriel told them how to make the weapons to kill her if necessary. He stressed the if necessary part and made it clear that it was only to be in self-defense. He then took the rest of the ingredients, mixed some in a bowl, making a paste that he drew into a large symbol on the floor before grabbing another bowl and chanting something in ancient Greek before tossing the powdered fairy bones in the bowl and then leaned back on the couch with his feet up on the table and smug smirk on his face. 

He had convinced the hunters to let him handle this so when a beautiful winged Goddess appeared in the circle they stayed silent and Gabriel just said, “Psyche! So nice to see you again!”

“Loki,” she said distastefully. “I can’t say the same. You reek of human,” she said suspiciously. 

“Yes well. I decided to slum it for a while. See what it’s like on the other side and all,” Gabriel said dismissively. 

“You lie. You are human now in every way. I can see your soul. What do you want with me?”

“See here’s the thing doll. My buddy here went and got his soul filleted and I need you to fix it up nice and pretty for him.”

“And why would I do that?” she sneered. 

Gabriel just smirked wider and said, “Because if you don’t my next summon will be to Eros to tell him exactly how you managed to gain safe passage through the underworld on your little quest.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” she growled as she glared heatedly at him. 

“Course I would princess. You of all people should know that if I want something I get it,” Gabriel said with a salacious wink. 

“Fine. I will help your friend if I can, but that will make us even. I will kill you the next time I see you, and I will find you again.”

“Good! Then we have a deal!” He chirped as he got up and rubbed out the edge of the circle with his boot. 

As she advanced on Sam, Dean said, “Wait!” She stopped to look at him curiously but he was looking at Gabriel. “You’re sure she can be trusted?” 

“Absolutely Deano. She’s a woman of her word. She said she’ll do it and she will,” Gabriel said as he nodded to her to continue. 

“Lie down,” she barked at Sam, who tentatively lied down on the couch watching her warily. 

“Manners Psyche,” Gabriel said in a warning voice. 

As much as she hated to admit it, Loki was right. It wasn’t this mortal’s fault that Loki was a jerk, and if his soul truly was in as bad a shape as Loki had said, she felt sorry for him. Not that she normally would have helped without some sort of tribute. “Now relax mortal and let me see what we are working with here,” she said in a more delicate voice. She placed a hand on his forehead and another on his chest and then she gasped and looked at the others in the room alarmed. “Even I cannot heal all of the damage.”

“But you can heal some?” Dean asked hopefully. 

“I can heal most,” she replied. 

“Then please do,” Sam asked hopefully. 

“It will not be an easy or a pleasant process for you,” she said softly. 

“That’s okay. Nothing ever is,” Sam said encouragingly. 

“I suppose not,” she said thoughtfully, as she started chanting and her hands lit up, the glow encompassing Sam’s entire body and Sam started to scream. 

Gabriel caught Dean holding him back, and it spoke a lot for the trust that Dean was reluctantly putting in Gabriel, or more like the hope for Sam that was forcing him to trust Gabriel that he didn’t break the former archangel’s hold. Gabriel was no match for Dean’s strength anymore if he was really trying. “She won’t hurt him Dean. I’d stake my life on it,” Gabriel said seriously. 

“Just so long as you know that you are,” Dean said just as seriously as he stopped struggling. Gabriel nodded and let him go. 

After what seemed like forever, but in reality was only about thirty minutes, her chanting started to taper off, as did the glow and Sam’s screams. Once she was completely finished she turned to them and said, “He is as healed as I can make him,” before glaring at Gabriel. “And I meant what I said. Next time we meet I will kill you, and you can’t stay in a warded location forever.” 

When she disappeared everyone rushed over to a moaning Sam. “Sammy? You okay? Someone get him something for his throat. It’s probably raw. Sammy? Can you hear me?” Dean was nearly frantic. 

“I hear you. Not so loud. Head hurts,” Sam croaked out hoarsely as Gabriel got back with some honey. 

Dean looked at him incredulously. “What? It’s not like we have any throat lozenges lying around. It’ll help. Trust me.”

Dean grabbed it from him roughly. “I’ve been doing too much of that lately.” 

He squirted the honey into Sam’s mouth anyway and he swallowed it. “Much better,” Sam said in an almost normal voice. “Head still hurt though.”

Dean handed over some painkillers and asked, “Can you sit up?”

“I…think so?” Dean and Bobby helped him to sitting and Sam dropped his head against the back of the couch after he swallowed the pills Dean gave him. 

Now that that was taken care of Bobby turned to Gabriel, “What the hell was that all about?”

“I assume you know the story of Psyche?” he asked knowing that Bobby was the walking lore library. 

“Goddess of Souls, hated by Aphrodite, loved by Eros, but he sent her away after she looked him and Aphrodite would only help her get back to him after she did a bunch of crap including going into the underworld,” Bobby recited from memory. 

“Essentially correct, and I assume you know my story too? As Loki, not Gabriel.”

Bobby narrowed his eyes in thought for a moment. “You have a daughter that rules the underworld don’t you?”

“Yup. And I just so happened to be visiting her at the time, and let’s just say that Psyche would have done anything to get back to her beloved Eros,” he said with a smirk. 

Dean, as blunt as ever, said, “So you got a fuck-buddy and she got safe passage?”

“Something like that…and she also owed me a favor too which I have now called in.”

“Making you fair game to be killed as the only person who knows about what she did,” Bobby pointed out. 

“Gabriel,” Sam said reaching out blindly for Gabriel’s hand, not quite willing to open his eyes just yet. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

“Course I should’ve Samsquatch. Only way to fix you. Don’t worry. I’ll get one of those fancy tattoo things to ward myself from her.” Sam squeezed his hand gratefully. “C’mon kiddo. We should get you to bed. You need to rest.”

Sam made his way to bed, supported on either side by Dean and Bobby and Gabriel went to start on dinner. Dean wanted to make Sam eat something but Gabriel told him to just let Sam rest and promised to make an extra-large breakfast in the morning. 

 

When they woke up the next morning Sam’s headache was mostly gone and he felt much better than he had in a very long time. He looked around nervously and sighed with relief when he didn’t see Lucifer anywhere and he popped out of bed a cheerfully made his way to the kitchen where Dean and Gabriel were already sitting at the table eating. “How you feeling Sammy?” Dean asked.

“Great! Still a bit of a headache, but no more Lucifer and I feel…I don’t know…whole I guess,” he said happily and then looked at Gabriel. “Thank you Gabriel. Really. It means a lot.”

“Anytime Samsquatch,” Gabriel said with a grin. “That was kinda fun anyway.”

“Yeah, I was wondering. If you knew she would come after you, and that she conceivably can kill you now that you’re human, why would you bait her like that? Wouldn’t it have been better to be nice?” Sam asked. 

Gabriel snorted. “If I had been nice she would have been too suspicious wondering what kind of game I was playing and refused to help.”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Dean muttered.


	6. Chapter 6

Later that day, Sam and Gabriel were sitting on the couch while Dean made dinner and Sam’s arm brushed against him and he flinched again. “Still not used to touch?” Sam asked softly. 

Gabriel glanced towards the kitchen to make sure that Dean couldn’t hear and then said, “No. Not really. It doesn’t really matter though.”

“You seemed fine when I grabbed your hand yesterday, of course I was pretty out of it so maybe I just didn’t notice.”

“Well yeah. I saw you reaching for it and expected it so I was able to not react,” Gabriel said with a shrug. 

“Well we’re just gonna have to get you used to touch then won’t we?” Sam said with a grin. 

“Why does it matter?” Gabriel groaned, knowing that once the hunter got something in his head he wouldn’t let it go. 

“You can’t go around flinching every time someone touches you. It draws too much attention,” Sam said matter-of-factly. Truth is Sam had no idea whether it would draw attention or not, but he wanted to give Gabriel some reason other than just the fact that Sam wanted to fix him. 

“And if your brother notices?” Gabriel asked worriedly. 

Sam couldn’t help the warmth he felt at the fact that Gabriel felt comfortable sharing this with him and no one else. “He’ll just think you’re still jumpy about everything that’s happened. Trust me. He’s not that observant,” Sam said as he put a hand on Gabriel’s shoulder. 

When they went into the kitchen for lunch, Sam walked behind Gabriel and brushed a hand across the back of his neck making Gabriel jump and shudder. Dean, as expected didn’t notice. Sam continued the next few days with touching Gabriel every chance he got and eventually Gabriel stopped flinching, but anytime Sam touched bare skin he would still get a bit of a shudder. 

Sam was just glad he had an excuse to touch Gabriel. He had realized that he was falling for the former archangel and how could he not once he realized that Gabriel was so much more than he had seemed before. He was small and scared in a new situation, but strong enough to carve his own skin all to hell in order to survive, and proud and stubborn enough not to ask for help when it got too bad, and even kind enough to call in a favor and put his own life on the line to help Sam recover from hell. All in all, it was a pretty appealing package and he was falling hard. 

When Dean headed out for another hunt with Bobby, now that he was sure that Sam was recovered, leaving Sam alone with Gabriel, Sam had decided that he was going to make a move. Dean had left after lunch and after dinner he and Gabriel were watching a movie and Sam put his arm around Gabriel’s shoulders. 

Gabriel shuddered a little. This was a new one. He turned to look at Sam curiously and saw the doubt and nervousness in his eyes and in the way he was biting his lower lip and he began to suspect that there was more to this whole touching thing than just getting him used to it. Could he really be that lucky though? He decided to test his theory and moved a little closer to the hunter so that their sides were pressed together and Sam’s arm tightened around his shoulders and the hunter’s lips quirked into a smile. 

Gabriel looked back at him and caught his eyes and he suddenly found it harder to breathe and his heart was racing. Neither of them noticed that they were getting closer together until they felt each other’s breath ghosting across their lips. Sam’s other hand moved to lay flat against Gabriel’s chest but other than that neither of them moved. Gabriel because he was incredibly nervous about what it would feel like to kiss someone now, and Sam because he was giving Gabriel every chance to move away if he didn’t want this. Finally, the stalemate was broken as Gabriel just breathed out, “Sammy,” in a voice so full of need and want and Sam couldn’t hold back anymore as he closed the remaining distance between them. 

When Gabriel felt Sam’s soft lips moving against his own he couldn’t help the whimper that escaped from him. This was everything he’d ever wanted. Even before he knew he wanted it, and he was suddenly glad that he’d become human if it meant he got to feel things like this. When he felt Sam’s tongue against his lips, tentatively asking for entrance he pulled the hunter closer and gladly opened for him and the sensations went to a whole new level as their tongues joined the dance. As he felt Sam’s tongue probing his mouth he moaned. Even his usual oral fixation was heightened now and he shifted and lay down on the couch pulling Sam on top of him. 

When he felt that Sam was just as hard as he was, he couldn’t help but thrust his hips up, swallowing Sam’s moan. He knew that he was going to embarrass himself by creaming his pants like a teenager, but he couldn’t be bothered to care at this particular moment as he moved his hands to Sam’s ass pulling him down harder even as he thrust up himself as needy whimpers were drawn from his throat. When they had to break for air, Sam moved his lips to Gabriel’s neck and began kissing and nipping and sucking everywhere he could reach as the former archangel came apart beneath him and their motions became more and more frantic. 

Sam could tell that Gabriel was close to blowing and he knew that he wouldn’t get his own release, but that was okay. This was all so new to Gabriel, and he would gladly wait until he was ready for more. He let Gabriel’s hands on his ass guide him to the correct pace and angle as his mouth worked over Gabriel’s neck for a few more minutes before moving back to his mouth. As Sam’s tongue plundered his mouth, Gabriel lost it and came hard, trembling against the hunter, whose kiss had turned from urgent to sweet as he ran a hand through Gabriel’s hair and over the side of his face. 

Once Gabriel had stopped trembling Sam shifted slightly so that he was mostly beside Gabriel, his back against the back of the couch and his head propped up to that he could look at him. Sam smiled brightly at Gabriel and then kissed him again, short and soft and chaste. Now that it was over Gabriel hoped against hope that he was wrong in his sudden assumption and asked, “More of your touch therapy?”

Sam’s smile lost some of its luster, but he just continued running a hand through Gabriel’s hair as he said, “No. That was because I wanted to.” Inside though he was reeling. He suddenly felt like he was taking advantage of Gabriel but didn’t know how to take it back. 

Gabriel just said, “Good,” and leaned up for another short kiss. 

Sam sighed. “This isn’t a very good idea,” he said sadly. 

Gabriel’s heart skipped a beat. Really? That’s how this was gonna be? “Huh. I thought it was your brother who was the whole love em and leave em type,” he said acerbically as he turned his head away so that Sam wouldn’t see the emotions churning in his eyes. 

Sam felt a pang of guilt at that. “I…no…I mean…it’s not like that…it’s just…” Sam trailed off not really sure what to say. 

“It’s just what Sam? You were curious and now your curiosity is satisfied? Well good for you,” he said heatedly. 

“No. It’s just that I don’t want to…you know…take advantage of your or anything. I mean…this is all so new to you and…” he trailed off again. 

Gabriel snorted. “I’m not some blushing virgin Sam. Sure the intensity of the sensations is new, but I’m not exactly the type to go falling over the first knight in shining armor who rescues me if there weren’t already feelings there to begin with,” he said derisively. 

Sam sucked in a sharp breath. “Feelings? Before?” His mind was whirling with the implications. 

Gabriel rolled his eyes. Feelings was vague enough and non-commital enough that he didn’t mind admitting that freely. Not after what had just happened between them anyway. “What you think I strolled into that hotel and sacrificed my life for you because I just thought you were swell guys? Please,” he said sarcastically. 

“But Kali…” Sam protested. 

“Yeah because sacrificing my life for someone who had just stabbed me in the freaking heart is more believable?”

“Well we’ve tried to kill you too. More than once,” Sam pointed out. 

“Sure but that was before. You weren’t operating on all the facts and that was a fun game. She did it with full knowledge and with something that would have actually killed me if I hadn’t been quick enough to switch my blade with a fake.”

Sam blinked at that before his hand started carding through Gabriel’s hair again. “Why didn’t you ever say anything?” he asked softly. 

It spoke for how well Gabriel knew the hunter that he was able to keep up with the change in subject. “Yeah. That would have gone over well,” he started cynically. “Hey I know you don’t like me and barely tolerate me, but just so you know I’m kinda in love with you. Yeah definitely a good idea.”

“Love?” Sam asked breathlessly. 

Gabriel started a bit and ran through his last statement in his head finally realizing what he had just said and followed it up with a soft, “Fuck.”

That, more than anything else, convinced Sam of his sincerity, and he leaned back down to press another soft kiss to his lips. “You didn’t mean to say that did you,” he asked amused. 

Seeing that Sam wasn’t running made him relax a bit as his lips quirked into a sheepish half-smile as he said, “No. I didn’t.”

“Since when?” Sam asked curiously. He knew that he should say something about his own feelings but he was the type who needed all the facts before making that kind of decision. 

“You don’t want to know,” Gabriel said softly, not wanting to remind Sam of the incident. 

“Try me,” Sam said just as softly. 

Gabriel took a deep shaky breath, knowing that this could blow everything, but not able to deny Sam anything. “Since Mystery Spot.”

He felt Sam tense up for a moment and he said, “Why? How?”

Gabriel thought of how he could possibly explain it to make this better. “Your tenacity and determination struck a cord, and then your single-minded focus on your goal after that first Wednesday, it impressed me. I was already falling when I called you to me at the end. I hadn’t decided what I was going to do yet, but when you just looked at me, with tears in your eyes, like I was the last thin thread holding your fragile world together…I was gone. I was always going to bring your brother back once you learned your lesson, but in that moment I didn’t care if you had learned or not. You were going to get him back. I had to at least try to get through to you first though or it would have all been for nothing. When I saw it wasn’t working though I gave up and left, knowing that you would hate me forever anyway.”

“You were trying to get me to give up so that I wouldn’t go after Lilith and start the apocalypse,” Sam assumed.

“Yes,” Gabriel said sadly. 

“I’m sorry I didn’t listen,” Sam said in almost a whisper. Gabriel’s eyes snapped to Sam’s in astonishment. Then Sam smiled and leaned down as if to kiss him again but stopped just short of his mouth and whispered, “And I’m kinda in love with you too.”

Gabriel surged that last inch pressing his lips to Sam’s and immediately deepening the kiss.


	7. Chapter 7

They spent the evening lying together on the couch watching TV, interspersed with small kisses as Sam’s ‘touch therapy’ reached a whole new level as his hands wandered all over Gabriel’s chest and stomach and arms and legs. After about an hour of that though, Gabriel got up to go take a shower before bed. He was still sticky from before and it was driving him almost as crazy as Sam’s hands all over him. After he was showered and dressed he started to go to bed but hesitated at his doorway before biting his lip and asking Sam hopefully, “Do you want to…um…lay down with me?” 

Sam looked at him searchingly for a moment and saw that Gabriel wasn’t asking for sex, just someone to be there and he nodded and turned the TV off. Once they were in bed, Sam pulled Gabriel close, his back to Sam’s chest and dropped a kiss to the top of his head. “Good night Gabriel,” he whispered as the former archangel drifted off to sleep. 

Sam wasn’t surprised to be awake before Gabriel this time, since he wasn’t used to going to bed so early and needed less sleep than a newly human archangel would. He was going to surprise Gabriel by making him breakfast, but when he started to move away Gabriel whined in his sleep and pressed closer so he just smiled and lay there waiting for him to wake up. 

When he felt Gabriel start to stir he leaned forward and, unable to get a good angle on his mouth, pressed a soft kiss to his neck. Gabriel shuddered and pushed back more firmly against Sam pressing Sam’s erection against his ass. “Fuck Sammy,” Gabriel said breathlessly. “You sure know how to wake a guy up right.” He spun and captured Sam’s lips in his own as his hands moved up underneath Sam’s shirt over his sides and back. 

Sam was spurred on by that and moved his lips to Gabriel’s neck as his hands started unbuttoning Gabriel’s shirt. Gabriel’s only response was to pull Sam’s own shirt over his head and begin running his hands over every inch of skin he could reach. Once Gabriel’s shirt was off, Sam slid easily over top of him licking a long line up from his collarbone to his ear as Gabriel gasped and held on tighter at the feel of the skin contact. 

Once Gabriel’s grip loosened a bit, Sam started dragging his lips down over Gabriel’s collarbones and chest, pausing to swirl his tongue over Gabriel’s nipples causing him to arch his back and give a keening moan. As his lips moved down a little lower and his hands moved to the waistband of Gabriel’s pants he paused and asked, “Do you want me to stop?”

“Fuck, no,” Gabriel said breathlessly. 

“Just let me know if you do,” Sam said, still a little worried about sensory overload. 

“Yes yes…fine…whatever…just get on with it,” Gabriel said impatiently and Sam gave a short chuckle before slowly sliding Gabriel’s pants of his hips and licking a long stripe up the underside of Gabriel’s very impressive cock and Gabriel made a choking sound as his hand, quick as lightning, slid under Sam’s face and gripped tightly at the base of his cock, choking off his orgasm. When Sam tried to give him some time to get himself under control, Gabriel apparently had other ideas. “Shit Sammy…more…please,” he begged without removing his hand and Sam grinned and pushed Gabriel’s hand away replacing it with his own, before giving the head a light lick tasting the pre-cum there and then placing soft open mouth kisses all over the entire shaft. Gabriel was whimpering and moaning and thrusting his hips looking for more and all of it was going straight to Sam’s cock. 

Sam slid his own pants off his hips and began stroking himself with his free hand as he finally took Gabriel in his mouth. Gabriel’s hand tangled tightly in Sam’s hair, pulling almost painfully, but driving Sam crazy as his pace picked up both on his own cock and on Gabriel’s. When Gabriel looked down and saw Sam jerking himself off, he was glad that Sam’s other hand was still holding him back as he thrust up into the hunter’s mouth. Sam was adding his own moans to the mix of sounds and sending the incredible vibrations through Gabriel. 

After a while, Gabriel couldn’t stand it anymore. If he didn’t cum soon he was going to explode so he grabbed Sam’s wrist and pulled it away and Sam let go and Gabriel came down Sam’s throat, screaming his name and Sam wasn’t far behind him with a final moan and grunt even as he was swallowing around Gabriel. Once they were finished, Sam slid back up kissing Gabriel deeply again allowing him to taste himself on Sam’s tongue. It didn’t last long though as they were both really out of breath and Sam collapsed next to Gabriel, pulling him close. “Holy crap,” Gabriel said breathlessly. “You definitely know how to wake a guy up right.”

Sam laughed and nuzzled his face into Gabriel’s neck. “I love you Gabriel,” he said happily, not minding at all that he was the first to say it since the initial confessions last night. 

Gabriel tightened his arms around Sam. “I love you too Sam,” he said in awe that he was actually lucky enough to have this. 

Gabriel didn’t let Sam make breakfast, admitting that he found cooking rather therapeutic, so Sam agreed to let him do most of the cooking, but he, and Dean when he was there, would do the cleaning in return. 

 

After dinner that night they were making out on the couch, when they were startled apart by Dean storming in. He did a double take at them and knew exactly what he had walked in on and wasn’t really surprised. Contrary to Sam’s belief he wasn’t blind. He just chose not to comment on most things until they became more obvious, so he had noticed Sam falling for Gabriel, and fully expected something like this to happen sooner or later so he just rolled his eyes and tossed his bag harshly to the floor. 

“What happened? I wasn’t expecting you back for a few days,” Sam asked worriedly. 

“Damn Leviathans just don’t know when to quit. I don’t know how they’re tracking us, but Bobby has one locked up right now trying to get the information from him and I figured I’d better hightail it back here to make sure they weren’t tracking you too,” he said frustrated. 

“Do you know anything that might help?” Sam asked Gabriel. 

“Well when Leviathans take on someone’s form, they know everything that person knew at the time. They become that person basically with their own mind taking over the cloned mind of the original person. So it’s likely that they have someone in the cell phone company tracking your phones, or credit card company tracking your cards, or even in the police or FBI monitoring surveillance or all of the above.”

“Well they can’t be tracking our cell phones or they would have found us here already,” Sam said, knowing that they hadn’t exactly been sly about using their phones. 

“Yeah but the credit cards and surveillance maybe. Seems like every time I use a card I get one of those bastards on my tail,” Dean said. 

“And since they somehow managed to get a couple guys to become us, they would know all our aliases,” Sam said with a groan. 

“Ok, so just get new aliases that they don’t know and avoid any surveillance cameras and you should be good. I’d dump your phones too just in case. Just because they haven’t yet doesn’t mean they won’t start tracking you that way,” Gabriel suggested. 

“Yeah ok. Good plan, but new aliases that are completely off the radar aren’t exactly easy. They would know all our old post boxes for cards and setting up new ones without being seen by surveillance would be a nightmare, not to mention Bobby’s house is dust along with all his equipment for making IDs so we would have to find someone else and they don’t come cheap,” Dean said pointing out all the holes in Gabriel’s plan. 

“Where are we here anyway?” Gabriel asked realizing that he didn’t have any idea beyond northern US. 

“Whitefish, Montana,” Sam replied wondering why the change of subject.

“Ok, so I can help with most of that,” Gabriel said grabbing a piece of paper and a pen and writing something down before handing it to Dean. “Use that address for the cards. I have a safe house in Bonner’s Ferry, Idaho. Also got a large stash of cash and cards of my own there that you’re welcome to if you need it. Might want to head there anyway. It’s much nicer than this place and it would be nice to have clothes that fit again,” Gabriel said with a shrug. 

“Seriously? You have a nice safe house just a couple hours away and you didn’t mention it before now?” Dean asked incredulously. 

“I’ve been a little concerned with other things and the human mind is remarkably limited when it comes to keeping track of multiple things at once,” Gabriel explained. 

“Ok so we’ll head out in the morning?” Sam asked. 

“First, is there anything about this safehouse that’s going to kill us, trap us, transport us to an alternate dimension or different time, change us into anything else, make us turn colors…” Sam and Gabriel both started laughing as Dean started listing all manner of different fates that could await them entering a trickster’s secret lair. “What? I don’t know what kind of protections he might have put up against intruders!” 

Gabriel controlled his laughter long enough to say, “Don’t worry Deano. My safe houses are essentially for if I end up in exactly this position. I’m hardly going to bobby trap it when I don’t have the powers to undo the traps. The only protections there are will recognize me, even as a human and once I let you in, you’ll be free to come and go as you please.”


	8. Chapter 8

“Ok good. So now that that’s settled, do you know anything about any weaknesses the Leviathan may have?” Sam asked pulling Gabriel back against him. He had no intention of hiding his relationship from his brother and Dean would just have to get used to it. 

“Other than a fully powered archangel or God? No, unfortunately,” Gabriel said with a shake of his head. 

“What about a regular angel?” Dean asked. 

“Seraph. A ‘regular angel’” he did air quotes around that, “is called a seraph. And no. They would just be another meal to a Leviathan. It took all four of us archangels with God at our side to manage to lock them away last time and we still took a beating.”

“What about other things like iron, salt, silver, anything?” Sam asked hopefully.

“Sorry kiddo. Let me tell you a little bit about Leviathan. They were created to devour what was here before to create something new, but they got out of hand. They didn’t stop when they were supposed to, so we locked them away. There were never humans and Leviathan at the same time. There was never anything and Leviathan at the same time, so it’s possible that one or all of those things can hurt or kill them, but I have no idea because none of them existed then.”

“Maybe make a guess?” Dean asked. 

Gabriel sighed heavily. “Look. Guys. If I were still an archangel I could bring up a map of their entire genetic structure from memory and analyze it and take it apart and figure out something that could hurt them, but I’m not. My human brain doesn’t have that kind of capacity.”

Sam rubbed a hand over his shoulder where it was resting. “It’s okay Gabriel. We get it. We were just kinda hoping for a different answer, but I know you’re doing your best.”

“Ok so basically we need an archangel, but you’re powered down, Raphael is dead, and Michael and Lucifer are in the cage so let’s not even go there. Any ideas?” Dean asked. 

“Is there any way for you to get your power back?” Sam asked Gabriel. 

“Well…” Gabriel said thoughtfully as he stared into space. Sam and Dean waited hopefully and patiently for him to continue. “It’s a long shot. Like one in a billion long shot…”

“What is it?” Dean asked. 

“Well there’s an extremely slim chance that when I was killed my grace attached to something in the area. If we could find it...”

“Then we could power you back up! That’s great!” Dean said excitedly. 

“Yeah. Great,” Gabriel said less than enthusiastically. 

“You don’t sound happy about it. I would have thought you’d love to get your powers back,” Dean said suspiciously. 

Sam thought he knew what the problem was. “Give us a minute Dean?” he asked as he pulled Gabriel towards his bedroom so they could talk privately. Once they were alone Sam turned to Gabriel and said, “Talk to me.”

“I don’t want to be an archangel again. I…now that I know this feeling,” he said reaching out to run a hand over Sam’s face, “I don’t want to let it go. I don’t want to live without it anymore.”

Sam kissed him deeply. “I understand Gabriel, and we will keep looking for another way, but if we can’t find one…”

“Then I’ll do what I need to do,” Gabriel said sadly. 

“Just know that angel or not, I won’t stop loving you. You can still have me, no matter what, even if it’s not quite the same,” Sam said pulling him close. 

“Thanks Sam. And it won’t change my feelings either. Just everything else.”

After a few minutes Sam said, “We should probably get back to Dean.”

“Yeah okay,” Gabriel said shakily as he got up and placed his mask firmly back in place. 

Once they got back out there Sam said, “Okay, so Gabriel doesn’t want his powers back, but will do it if we can’t find another way. Assuming we can find his grace in the first place.” 

“What? Why?” Dean asked disbelievingly. 

“It’s not important,” Sam said dismissively. 

“This has something to do with you two doesn’t it?” Dean concluded and they both nodded tightly. “Just so long as you’re willing if it’s necessary.”

“So are there any other options that we could use your grace for?” Sam asked. 

“Do you have any other angels that you trust?” Gabriel asked. 

“Trust how?” Dean asked. There was trust and there was TRUST. 

“Trust enough to run heaven and not turn the earth into their own private playground and raze everything to the ground,” Gabriel said. “If I give my grace to another angel, they would become an archangel and, as the only one, would be de facto head of heaven.”

“No. None that I would trust that much. Power corrupts. Hell look at Cas and I would have trusted him with my life six months ago.”

Gabriel felt the need to point out, “You realize you’re asking me to take on that power right?”

“Well yeah, but as much as I hate to say it, I’d trust you more with it than any other angel. I mean, I know you just want to cause trouble on a minor scale and deal out just deserts and make your life easier. You don’t want to take over and destroy the world,” Dean said straightforwardly. 

“So can it only go to another angel or can it go to a human too?” Sam asked getting a crazy idea. 

Gabriel looked at him curiously. Surely he wasn’t suggesting… “It would completely burn out a human, but I did hear of a spell once. To strengthen a human enough to take in the grace of an angel. It may have been a rumor and even if it’s not I would have to see it to know if it would work for an archangel’s grace, but…well…it’s another long shot really. Did you have someone in mind?” 

“Well I have a few options in mind actually, but let’s just see if it’s doable first huh? First thing we need to do is find your grace and see if the spell exists. I say we split up. Dean can go after your grace, and you and I can hit the books and internet and see what we can find there. I’m good at research and you would know what we are looking for and I think we all know the signs of grace landing somewhere so Dean can do that part,” Sam said trying to change the subject before anyone could ask any more about who he had in mind to become an archangel and the ruler of heaven. 

“You two just want some alone time,” Dean accused. 

“That’s a definite bonus, but his division still makes sense,” Gabriel said with a grin. 

“Just so long as you make sure you’re actually working and not just making goo-goo eyes at each other the whole time,” Dean said grudgingly. 

Sam rolled his eyes, “Yes of course Dean.”

At the same time Gabriel said provocatively, “Why make goo-goo eyes when there are so many more fun things to be doing…oof.” Sam smacked him in the stomach. 

They had decided to split up the next morning, Sam and Gabriel taking Rufus’ old truck to Idaho, and Dean taking the Impala to Indiana to check the hotel for signs of grace. Gabriel warned him to take a larger vial since the normal small ones they used for a seraphs grace wouldn’t hold his and Gabriel said he was going to bed. 

Sam got up to follow him and Dean said, “I’m guessing you’re sleeping in there now?” 

Sam looked questioningly at Gabriel. Just because he had wanted to share a bed last night didn’t mean he wanted to every night, but Gabriel just gave him an encouraging look that he took to mean ‘it’s up to you’ so he turned to Dean and said, “Yeah. Probably.”

“Just keep the volume down would you? There are some things I never need to hear.”

Neither of them responded as they headed into the bedroom. Once they were alone Gabriel grabbed Sam and kissed him desperately. Sam kissed him back and pulled him close but when Gabriel broke for air he asked, “What was that for?” 

“If I might have to get my grace back, I want to get as much of this as I can,” Gabriel said running his hand down Sam’s chest. 

Sam grinned and yelled, “Might want to take a walk Dean!” as he moved Gabriel to the bed kissing him all the way as they both removed their shirts. 

They tumbled onto the bed in a heap, hands and lips roaming everywhere they could reach Sam hovering above Gabriel, until Gabriel tugged him down rubbing their erections together. “Take me Sammy,” he gasped breathlessly as his hands fumbled for Sam’s pants. 

“You sure?” Sam asked just as breathlessly. 

“Definitely,” Gabriel said as he managed to get Sam’s pants open and stick his hand inside. Sam moaned and managed to remove both of their pants and ran to his bag to grab the lube. He was definitely going to make sure this was as good and pain free for the former archangel as possible. He lubed up his fingers and pressed one at Gabriel’s entrance as he slotted himself back over the smaller man and kissed him deeply as his first finger pressed in, brushing against Gabriel’s prostate. “Oh fuck Sammy,” Gabriel cried out as he pressed his ass down for more. 

Once he had three fingers pumping in and out, he removed them as a needy whine pulled from Gabriel, but he wouldn’t be empty for long as Sam quickly slicked himself up and pushed slowly inside resting against the prostate as he leaned down for a kiss while Gabriel got used to the feeling. “Please Sammy…fuck me…” Gabriel murmured against his lips. 

Sam started moving, slowly at first, just rocking hips back and forth massaging the sweet spot and Gabriel reached up to choke himself off again, but Sam moved his hand away and did it for him as he slowly picked up the speed. “Shit Sammy…more…harder…please…” Gabriel begged. 

“God Gabe…so tight…so hot…so good,” Sam panted as he moved faster and harder until he was slamming into Gabriel so hard that Gabriel had to use his hands to brace himself against the headboard that was slamming into the wall. 

“Fuck yes Sam!” Gabriel shouted as he bucked his hips up in time with Sam’s thrusts. Sam felt himself about to blow so he loosened his grip on Gabriel’s cock and started pumping. It took no time at all for Gabriel to cry his name as he spilled over, pulling Sam over the edge with him. Sam barely managed to collapse mostly to the side so that his full weight wasn’t on top of Gabriel, who wasted no time curling up to the hunter’s side. “I really hope I don’t have to give this up,” he huffed, short of breath.


	9. Chapter 9

Sam and Gabriel made it to Idaho and Sam’s jaw dropped at the man’s idea of a safe house. It was more like a mansion, complete with wrought iron gate and long winding driveway with a fountain out front. “Seriously Gabriel? This is a safe house?”

“Hey just cause a guys in hiding don’t mean he can’t be comfortable,” Gabriel said with a smirk as he parked the battered old truck in the garage and headed inside, leaving Sam to follow him. 

Gabriel’s first stop was the basement, which alone was bigger than the entire cabin they had been staying in before. He pulled a couple bags out of a false wall and tossed them to Sam who caught them expertly. One was full of cash. There must have been a few hundred thousand dollars in there. The other was full of other miscellaneous stuff, multiple different credit cards, social security cards, driver’s licenses, burner phones, and prepaid cards with minutes for them. “Damn Gabriel. You’re stocked. You’re telling me you expected something like this?”

“When you have as many enemies as I do, not to mention being on the run from heaven, it’s good to have some bolt holes to lie low and supplies in case I lose my powers or if they are being tracked somehow and I can’t use them,” Gabriel said with a shrug. “Also any kind of electronic tracking is scrambled here, including the gps on your phones, but you can still get reception for calls and wifi.”

“Nice,” Sam said with a whistle. 

Sam activated one of the phones and texted Dean the number, in code of course just in case anyone was monitoring and reminded him to grab a burner of his own and not to use any cards. It should be a few more days before the new cards arrived, and hopefully Dean would be back by then. Sam had given Dean all the cash they had which amounted to about four hundred dollars figuring that would keep him for a few days and if not, he could always hustle some pool or something for more. Sam had only kept enough to fill up the truck for their own trip knowing that once they got here Gabriel would set them up. 

Gabriel, having always just snapped his IDs into existence had no idea who to go to in order to get new ones, but Sam made some calls and found someone about an hour away. He left Gabriel to start the search for the spell while he took care of that. Sam was back by mid-afternoon and yelled for Gabriel from the entryway, having no idea where to go. When he saw Gabriel at the top of the marble staircase he went up and followed him to the library and whistled again. “Nice library.”

“Thanks. Never know what information you might need when you’re down on your luck so I’ve got pretty much everything here. This is the supernatural library. The normal library is next door.”

“Normal library? What just in case you need to debate literature?” Sam asked with a laugh.

“No doofus,” Gabriel said rolling his eyes. “Just in case I need to navigate taxes or get a job or learn how technology actually works beyond just operating it…that kind of stuff.”

“Oh. Right.”

“So I’ve been going through this library. Unfortunately, it’s not very organized. If the spell exists it will be in one of these books,” he said gesturing to a stack of books that made Sam’s head hurt just thinking about it, and he didn’t even want to consider the scrolls that looked older than time itself. “I separated them for us too. These stacks are in English and Latin for you. This one is Greek. I know you understand enough of that to get by in case you finish yours before I get through the rest. Sound good?”

“Ok. Yeah. Do you remember anything about the spell that could be useful in skimming?” Sam asked. 

“Not really. I just heard that it existed, nothing detailed. I was kinda hiding from heaven at the time and asking for more information about a spell about angels would have raised some red flags.”

“But you’re sure it was specifically about angels? That could be a keyword to look for.”

“No I’m not sure. Just that it could be used for that. I don’t know if that was the original purpose or not, but yeah keep an eye out for anything about angels, grace, power, strength, humans, whatever,” Gabriel told him a bit impatiently. 

“Right. Got it,” Sam said as he pulled his three stacks to him and sat down. He had made it through three of the roughly thirty books set aside for him by dinnertime and looked over to see that Gabriel was on his eighth. He supposed after having all the knowledge of creation in your head, you were left with a bit more intelligence than an average human. “Since you’re Mr. speed reader, you wanna go grab some dinner for us?” 

“Sure thing Samsquatch,” Gabriel said marking his page and putting his book aside, dropping a kiss on Sam’s lips on his way out. 

They ate dinner in the library skimming through the books still and it wasn’t until two hours later that Gabriel said, “Ok that’s enough for the night.”

“It’s still pretty early,” Sam started to protest as Gabriel came over and straddled his lap. 

“Yes, but I was very serious about getting as much of this as I can, while I still can,” he said seductively. “We can hit the books again in the morning.” Try as he might Sam couldn’t argue with that and he just picked Gabriel up and carried him, Gabriel pointing the way to the bedroom while he was nibbling on the hunter’s neck. 

 

Two days later they got a call from Dean. He had found the grace. Or at least someone’s grace. The only clue he had that it might be Gabriel’s was from the fact that there was a lot more than he remembered from Anna. Gabriel theorized that Lucifer may have done something to bind it to the area, planning to come back for it and increase his own power when he won. It had taken Lucifer a while to kill him and he may not have just been gloating after all. 

 

The next day they only had a few books left when Sam got a call from Dean that he was outside the gates. He was very wary of anything that the trickster had waiting for anyone he didn’t let in. Gabriel got Sam to drive him to the gates, not wanting Dean to wait the ten minutes it would have taken him to walk, and let Dean in and he followed them to the house, parking in the other side of the garage. 

“Nice place,” Dean said appreciatively. 

“Thanks,” Gabriel said with a grin. “If you gotta hide, might as well do it in style.”

Dean nodded his agreement as they walked in side. Dean followed them to the library and took one look at the discarded stacks of books and what they had left and said, “Guess you guys really have been working while I was gone. Found anything yet?”

“Not yet, but there’s still a few more places to look,” Sam said burying himself back in the book he was reading. 

“Anything I can do?” Dean asked feeling a bit lost and not really up for going through dusty old books and knowing that Sam would double check everything he did anyway so it would be a waste of time. 

“Yeah. Why don’t you go make dinner and bring us something?” Sam asked hopefully. 

“Yeah sure Sammy,” Dean said beating a hasty retreat. Anything was better than research. 

It was lunchtime the next day before Sam said, “Hey Gabe! I think I got it! Check this out,” and he slid the book over to him. 

Gabriel studied it for what seemed like forever, before it said, “It’s promising. I’ll need to make some adjustments to allow it to encompass an archangel’s grace rather than a seraph’s and we will need to hunt down some things. I have most of what we will need though.”

“You have spell ingredients too?” Sam asked incredulously. 

“Of course I do. When powers are down, spells are a necessity after all,” Gabriel said as if it should be obvious. “I’ll get the corrections done and let you know what we need. We can send Deano after it since he’s been doing nothing but watching my TV since he got back.” 

“Yeah, sounds good,” Sam said absentmindedly, still checking other books for things they could use. He had marked a lot of things in the books he had already been through as being useful for the future. Gabriel had a different idea though. 

“So now that we know it’s possible, who were you thinking of giving my grace to?” Gabriel asked. 

“I was thinking either Dean or Bobby actually,” Sam said. 

“You’re kidding right? Please tell me you’re kidding.”

“Um..no. We can trust them not to go power mad and they definitely wouldn’t hurt earth,” Sam pointed out. 

“Yeah maybe not, but what would they do to heaven? In case it slipped your notice neither of them like angels very much.”

“Maybe not, but liking them isn’t a requirement. They can treat them fairly even if they don’t like them,” Sam said defensively. 

“That’s not the point! They have had more than enough standoffish leaders who don’t give a crap. They need someone to take care of them and help them, not bark orders and issue punishments,” Gabriel argued. 

“Well from what I’ve seen they don’t exactly have much in the way of feelings to be hurt making Dean or Bobby the best people to handle them. They are no nonsense, can cut through all the crap and tell it like it is. And it’s not like they can’t come to us for help if they need it right?”

Gabriel sighed heavily. He could see Sam’s point, but he was wary of putting his sibling’s lives and welfare in the hands of Dean Winchester for the rest of eternity. “It’s not like we’ll be around forever Sam.”

“Maybe not, but you’ve got a soul now right? That means you can go to heaven and he can find you there can’t he?”

Gabriel narrowed his eyes at Sam. “Don’t you mean ‘we’ can go to heaven?”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Please Gabriel. I was Lucifer’s vessel. Like I’m going anywhere but hell.”

Gabriel slammed his fists on the table making Sam jump. “Don’t even start that bullshit Sammy. Yes, you were Lucifer’s vessel, but he was an angel. He was cast out of heaven for something he did and that has no bearing on you whatsoever. Got it?”

“I was addicted to demon blood Gabriel,” Sam said pointedly. 

“And you kicked it. I could still see your soul after that you know, and you were one of the brightest I had ever seen. There is no way you would go anywhere but heaven and from what I know you haven’t done anything anywhere near bad enough for that to have changed.”

“A lot happened while I was soulless,” Sam said ashamedly. 

“You were soulless, which means it didn’t have any impact on your soul. Now any more stupid arguments or are you going to drop the whole ‘I’m going to hell’ load of crap.”

“Yeah. Okay. I get it Gabriel. Once we die Dean will be able to find ‘us’ there.”

“I still don’t know about this,” Gabriel said wearily. 

“Let’s just talk to them and see if either of them are willing to do it,” Sam said. 

“Between the two, Dean would be the better choice. As a destined vessel they would be more likely to listen to him, and the spell would work much better too.”


	10. Chapter 10

It took Gabriel a few hours to make the adjustments to the spell and he made two lists of ingredients. One with all of the ingredients, and one with just the ones that they needed to get. When they sat down to dinner, in the kitchen for the first time since they had gotten there and Gabriel brought up the subject of who the new archangel would be. “So Deano. Sam seems to think that you would be the best choice to use my grace,” he dropped the bombshell. 

“He thinks what?” he asked Gabriel before turning to Sam and asked, “You think what? Are you nuts?”

“Well think about it Dean. Who else can you trust not to go nuts and power hungry? And you can help the angels learn to function on their own and quit taking crap out on earth,” Sam pointed out. 

“You expect me to run heaven? To deal with angels? You do know I don’t like angels right?”

“You don’t like the angels you’ve met because they have a grudge against people, and they have a grudge against people because they are told to basically. You can tell them not to. You liked Anna well enough before she went nuts after all,” Sam pointed out. 

“So what? You expect me to spent the rest of forever sitting on a cloud playing a harp?” he asked incredulously. 

Gabriel snorted. “Please. Like that’s what heaven is like. It’s more like running an entire army of your own. Why do you think I wanted no part of it?”

“But I don’t have to run heaven right? I can pull a you and just stick around down here and even become a trickster if I wanted to,” Dean said. 

“Well sure. You could, but then who knows what the angels would get up to. They may even still be trying to get the cage back open, but the first priority needs to be the Leviathan obviously,” Sam told him. 

“Ok fine. How about this. I’ll take it, take care of the Leviathan, go drop some orders upstairs and then just hang out on earth,” Dean suggested. 

“Well you might need to do more than just drop some orders, but you can always delegate as much as you want so yeah, essentially that could work,” Gabriel said. “But you need to know that once it’s done, it’s forever. There’s no way to undo it.” Gabriel was feeling a little better about the idea since Dean didn’t start spouting off about smiting angels or anything and seemed to be worried about how he would be able to treat them. 

“I think I deserve to know the real reason why you don’t want your powers back before I decide anything. Also why Sammy here isn’t offering since he would obviously be a better choice than me,” Dean said. 

Sam sighed. He knew this would probably be the dealbreaker for Dean, but looked to Gabriel to explain. He could do so much better than Sam after all. “I can feel so much more like this. I don’t mean emotionally, I mean physically. Touch as an angel is very clinical. It doesn’t really mean anything like it does for humans. I mean yeah, the powers are nice and all, but not if it means I can’t feel Sam the way I do.”

“So what? Like I wouldn’t be able to have sex or anything?” Dean asked distastefully. 

“No you could. And it is enjoyable, but it’s not as…I don’t know…clear and meaningful I guess would be the best way to put it.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” Dean said thoughtfully. It’s not like he had sex for the meaning anyway. “That’s the only reason?”

“Well that and I don’t want the responsibility of watching over heaven. Since I would be the last one left, I couldn’t just turn my back on them, but really. Can you imagine me ruling over heaven’s armies?”

Both hunters shuddered at the thought. “Well Sammy went to hell to save the world. Least I can do is become an all-powerful archangel for the cause,” Dean said jokingly and Gabriel laughed at him while Sam rolled his eyes. “Ok so how do we do this?”

“First you need to go pick up these ingredients,” Sam said handing him the list Gabriel had made. 

“This is all it takes?” Dean asked curiously noticing that everything on the list was very common. 

“No. This is just what Gabriel doesn’t have stocked,” Sam said. 

“These are the most basic spell ingredients. How can you not have them stocked if you have others?” Dean asked. 

“Space was short so I left out the things that I could gather easily if they were needed,” Gabriel said as if it made perfect sense and if you looked at it that way it did. “While you’re getting those Samsquatch and I can start getting everything else ready.”

 

After Dean headed out the next morning, Gabriel started heading towards his ingredient room, Sam on his heels. “It’s too bad we didn’t know about all of this before. It would have really come in handy more than once,” Sam said. 

“It wouldn’t have done you any good,” Gabriel told him. 

“Why not?” Sam inquired. 

“Well for one, the main ingredient is the feathers of the archangel who’s grace he’s taking in and this is the only place I’ve ever left feathers. Well here and my other safe houses, none of which you could enter without me. Plus, there’s the fact that the disconnected archangel, me, has to be the one to say the spell or the grace will reject him and burn itself out over time and he’d die,” Gabriel explained. 

“Oh,” Sam said inelegantly. 

“So the only way for an archangel to pass on the torch is to do so willingly then is what you’re saying,” Sam summed up. 

“Pretty much,” Gabriel said with a shrug as they entered the ingredient storage room. 

“Thanks Gabriel. Really,” Sam said sincerely. 

“For what? You know I don’t want it,” Gabriel pointed out. 

“Well sure, but that doesn’t mean you have to let Dean use it. So thanks.” 

Gabriel just waved him off as he started pulling jars and boxes from the shelves and handing them to Sam. Once Sam’s arms were full he said, “Take those down to the ballroom. We’ll need lots of room.”

“Um…ballroom?” Sam asked. 

Gabriel sighed. “Remind me to give you a tour once all this crap is over. Go down the main staircase, take a hard left. The double doors lead to the ballroom.”

“I can’t believe you have a freaking ballroom,” Sam muttered as he was leaving. 

Once they had all the ingredients down in the ballroom Gabriel handed Sam three feathers each from three different jars and told him to grind them all separately. “Three different kinds?” Sam asked. 

“Three flight feathers, three down feathers, and three battle feathers,” Gabriel explained patiently. 

While Sam was working on that Gabriel started mixing a paste. Sam was nearly finished with the feathers when he was caught off guard by Gabriel placing a long cut over his forearm and letting it drip into the bowl. “Did it have to be your blood?” Sam grumbled. Despite knowing that he could take care of Gabriel this time, he still didn’t like the idea of Gabriel cutting himself after what had happened last time. 

“Yeah Samsquatch. It did,” Gabriel told him. Once he had judged there to be enough he reached for the bandage he had grabbed. “Even thought to bring a bandage this time,” he said proudly. 

“Just so long as you know we’re putting alcohol on it later just in case,” Sam said firmly. 

Gabriel just nodded as he finished mixing the blood into the paste and then pulled another feather that Sam recognized as a battle feather and using that to paint a large symbol on the floor. Inside the outer circle he separated it into quadrants and in each quadrant he drew a triangle, two upright and two upside down, before painting a line through one of each. 

By this time Sam was finished grinding the feathers and had them separated into different bowls as Gabriel had told him, the flight feathers in the gold bowl, the battle feathers in the silver, and the down feathers in the brass. Gabriel then handed him the archangelica flowers to grind, while he started chopping other ingredients into precise squares. 

When Dean got back, Gabriel set him to preparing the ingredients he had bought. Finally, everything was ready and Gabriel told Dean to stand on the air symbol. “Which one is air?” Dean asked. 

At the same time Sam asked, “Why air?” Sam knew he was asking a lot of questions, but he found this whole thing fascinating and Gabriel didn’t seem to mind. 

Gabriel pointed to the air symbol before telling Sam, “Each of the archangels were associated with a different element. Mine was air.”

“Let me guess, Lucifer was fire?” Dean asked sarcastically. 

“No actually. Lucifer was water. It would hardly be much of a punishment to imprison a being of fire in his own element. Michael was fire and Raphael was earth,” Gabriel explained. “So are we ready?” 

Dean nodded nervously and Sam said, “I guess so.”

Gabriel lit a sprig of archangelica plant on fire and dropped it in the bowl with the mixture of about half the ingredients and it created a soft blue flame and then Gabriel began chanting in Enochian, every so often adding another ingredient into the flame as the chant picked up pace and volume. Sam watched with rapt attention. 

Dean was getting a little uncomfortable. It wasn’t painful…it was more strange. His skin felt like it was burning hot, but ice cold at the same time somehow and his skin was starting to tingle a bit. He assumed that he shouldn’t move out of the symbol, but Gabriel hadn’t said anything about being still so he flexed his hands to try to shake it off, but that just made it worse so he didn’t do that again. 

After about forty-five minutes of chanting Gabriel threw the last ingredient in and the fire whooshed up. He motioned Sam behind the barricade he had set up and tossed the vial of his grace at Dean’s feet before diving behind it himself. They both tucked their knees to their chest and covered their heads and they felt the table being slid across the room, and them along with it, until it hit the wall as the light was nearly blinding even in their current position. 

Once it was over they came out to see that most of the room was in shambles and even the table they had hidden behind had quite a few metal shards sticking out of it and Dean was standing in the center blinking in shock. “Hey Deano. You wanna fix my ballroom up?” Gabriel called amusedly. 

“I…um…how?” Dean asked. It figured that all that talking about him getting the powers and he had never asked how to use them. 

“Just imagine it and snap your fingers. Or clap your hands, or wiggle your nose, or whatever you want to do. Feel free to make it your own.” 

“So there has to be some kind of gesture with it?” Sam asked. 

“Doesn’t have to be, but it’s easier at first to have some sort of trigger that your mind can latch onto.”

“So when you always snapped your fingers?” Sam asked. 

“Showmanship my dear Sammy. Showmanship,” he said smugly. Suddenly the room shifted around them as Dean figured it out. Gabriel looked up with a grin which quickly turned into a scowl as he saw the room was pink with butterflies all over the walls. And not even a nice shade of pink either. It was puke pink if there was such a thing. “We’re really going to regret this aren’t we?” He asked wryly and Sam and Dean both laughed at the trickster suddenly being on the other end of the tricks. 

“I love the just desserts and all Dean, but I have to live here too you know. Please fix it,” Sam asked. 

Dean, still laughing clapped once and it was back to the way it had looked before. “So do all the powers work the same way?” Dean asked. 

“Mostly. Just picture a destination to fly there. Picture the blade to summon it, etc, but be careful…” he trailed off as Dean suddenly disappeared. “Flight is a little too easy,” he finished uselessly. 

Dean was back with a sheepish look on his face a few minutes later. “I think I just scared the hell out of the playboy bunnies.”

“Yeah, usually best to make yourself invisible before flying to a public place,” Gabriel said with a roll of his eyes. “There’s a storage room on the third floor that no one every goes in. That’s a good place to fly in and out of.”


	11. Epilogue

They spent the rest of the afternoon getting Dean used to his new powers including summoning and banishing the archangel blade that used to be Gabriel’s but now belonged to Dean. “Now you’re not going to want to take on the Leviathan en masse. You’ll want to pick them off a few at a time. I’d suggest starting with the head Leviathan. Without him the others will be easy to pick off,” Gabriel coached him. 

“Well first I’m gonna start with that fucker that Bobby has, before he ends up getting hurt, then the jerks who are posing as us. Best to get a handle on the process before I go for the big boss anyway,” Dean said. 

“It’s up to you,” Gabriel said with a shrug. “And I suggest you visit heaven sooner rather than later. They are probably a mess up there right now and you don’t want to risk any of them starting a new apocalypse before you get to it.”

“Right. I’ll take care of the three Leviathan on my to do list, then hit up heaven and calm them down and get them moving in the right direction. Maybe they can help me find the Leviathan?” Dean asked. 

“Sure they can do that much, but make sure they know not to engage,” Gabriel said. 

“Ok. I’ll go get started on that. Just pray if you need me,” Dean said shaking his head. “It feels so weird to say that.”

“Hey Deano. You want to snap us up some dinner before you go?” Gabriel asked hopefully. 

Dean clapped once and there was a platter full of bacon cheeseburgers and another of fries on the table as well as a soda for Sam and a milkshake for Gabriel. “Nice,” Gabriel said sliding into his chair and taking a long draw off the milkshake before grabbing some burgers and fries as Dean disappeared. 

 

Dean took to his new job better than anyone expected and easily mobilized the angels against the Leviathan. They would spot one and trail him until Dean got around to killing it. It didn’t take long at all for the Leviathan threat to be neutralized. He then turned the angels towards other monsters and demons. They left hell alone, but any demon stepping foot on earth got smote. There were a few hunters that were annoyed at being put out of business by the angels, but most of them were glad to be able to get back to their normal lives without having to worry about people dying. 

Sam and Gabriel got treated to a long rant from Dean when he found out that Cas was alive and had just lost his memory temporarily. At Gabriel’s urging he welcomed Cas back to heaven, but it was a long time before he trusted him again. To say that Cas was shocked at the change in leadership was a massive understatement, but he took it in stride. He was always loyal to Dean anyway, Even when he was betraying him it was because he was trying to help him. 

Sam and Gabriel were married three years after Dean took over heaven and a year later Sam was enrolled in law school. Dean had snapped up all the documents he’d needed and Sam had refused to let him cheat saying that his original grades and test scores were just fine. He just needed a new identity since Sam and Dean Winchester were dead serial killers now, Dean having left the bodies of the leviathan versions of themselves for the police to find. Gabriel had so much money hidden in so many boltholes that neither of them ever needed to work, but Sam did for something to do. He mostly worked pro bono cases though, and very rarely lost. If there was one thing Sam was good at it was talking people around to his point of view. 

Gabriel mostly took care of the house and their children, though he did run a catering business part time since he still found cooking to be therapeutic. Sam and Gabriel had adopted three children, who learned to get used to their archangel uncle dropping in often and they had a full and wonderful life, dying peacefully in their sleep of old age. Dean quickly found them both sharing a heaven and their deaths continued on much like their lives had, just with the aching absence of their children and grandchildren who were no doubt now living it up on papa’s money. 

Dean had managed to relax the barriers around people’s individual heavens so they were able to visit with loved ones and Ash’s bar was booming. They were sure there were other similar places, but they had no need to find them. Harvelle’s was the hunter’s hangout in heaven much as it had been on earth and Sam finally got the chance to get to know his mother who absolutely loved Gabriel too. 

All in all, both heaven and earth flourished under Dean’s leadership, with a little help and advice from Gabriel and Sam of course…and everyone lived…or died…happily ever after.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry. Totally couldn't resist that last line lol.


End file.
